


like a weird, murdery uncle you don’t invite to thanksgiving

by 2ndtolastrow



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and the Signal (Comics)
Genre: Gen, and also dick is in a Bad Headspace, anyway give us more duke content 2kforever, discussion of cass/brenda miller but you don’t need to know who brenda is, either way the joker is not going to appear, hey look i did come back for it, it’s dickbats so refs to bruce being dead, might add to this but probs won’t so im gonna mark it complete, now featuring a part two with the dead robins club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: A series of moments in which the Gotham Rogues aren’t so bad.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
> Dick is in a shitty headspace, and thinks some stuff about himself that isn’t good. Also, he references Bruce’s time-travel “death.”  
> Kinda maybe secondhand embarrassment/public embarrassment for Duke’s section

“Riddle me this,” the Riddler begins. He’s in full costume, got some kind of neon, light-up array around him that would probably strike a perfect balance between garish and performative flair on any other night. Tonight it just makes Dick’s headache pulse.

“Eddie,” Dick says, because he is so tired right now. He just can’t tonight, with Bruce gone, and Damian here—and he is so glad that Damian has the flu right now, because of that kid saw him breaking down like this (and what kind of guy is he to be _glad_ his little brother is sick?)—and all the bullshit with Tim. “Please.”

Eddie pauses, squints at him for a long moment (and Bruce would never have said _please,_ c’mon Dick, really). “Are you… okay?”

“Can we just—“ Dick breaks off, gestures vaguely in a ‘speed this up’ kind of way. There’s a part of him that’s aware enough to feel awkward standing in the Batman uniform in front of this stupid neon platform, in the kind of abandoned warehouse that’s all too common in Gotham, talking to a guy in a green and purple suit, but honestly, he’s just too tired for this shit.

“If you have it—“ and apparently his pleas are just being ignored, great, thanks— “you want to share it, but if you share it, you don’t have it.” He winks, leans in. “It’ll be our little—“

“Secret.” Dick doesn’t smile—he doesn’t think he can, in this uniform, but the Riddler does. 

“Got a reputation to uphold, after all. The codes are in that desk over there.” He gestures to a desk just out of the lights, of the kind that brings Dick back to his BPD days. It’s clearly been brought in recently.

He pulls a set of cuffs out of his belt, holds them up. “Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” the Riddler says, and Dick tosses them over to him. He still keeps an eye out as he grabs the deactivation codes, but, honestly, it takes a hell of a weight of his shoulders.

Batgirl is perched like some kind of shadowy, avenging specter in the upper left corner of their prison transport, and Ivy would be lying if she said it didn’t creep her out. She gets that it’s an easy place to break out and all, but this Batgirl has proven herself to be a very good fighter as well as looking like that, so she feels justified in her wish that _he’d_ sent someone else. 

Literally anyone else. Even himself.

Harley, on the other hand, appears to have no such compunctions. She bounces forward on the bench, twisting to face the front, leaning her head on chained-together hands, and grinning widely. “So, how’s it goin’ with that Brenda gal you been talkin’ ‘bout?”

This Batgirl doesn’t talk much. In fact, she prefers to sign when possible, but even that is done sparingly. How Harley got a topic of conversation—much less one so personal—out of her is anyone’s guess. Probably the therapist training. (At least Croc and Two-Face look just as confused.)

Batgirl centers herself on the ridge at the front of the cab she’s been braced on, responding quickly, almost… _excitedly._ “I asked her if she wanted to go to dinner.”

“And she said…” Harley prompts, waggling her eyebrows. 

“Yes!” (Ivy can’t see her face to note an exclamation point, but she feels fair in assuming one based on the speed of her response, and the topic they’re discussing.)

Harley turns to face her, and the full force of that smile is turned on a new target. (It looks prettier, Ivy thinks, now that she isn’t in all that makeup.) “You see that, Red? She said yes!”

Ivy snorts, just a little. (She’s got a reputation to uphold, and it isn’t one that includes caring about the romance of a teenage vigilante.) (Even if she thinks it’s kind of, maybe, possibly, sort of cute.) Her tone is just a bit sarcastic when she speaks. “Congratulations.”

The way Batgirl signs, “thank you” is annoyingly sincere looking.

Duke is quite possibly at his greatest moment of social embarrassment and public humiliation yet. Or ever. Yeah, definitely ever. 

Sure, he’s been beaten up publicly several times, he’s accused the goddamn Batman of being morally corrupt, and he’s had a _Green Lantern_ telling him he was being too reckless and needed to hold his horses, but this is it.

His fucking stomach growled while fighting _Mr Freeze._ Man, all Duke tried to do was stop a bank robbery, and now he’s gonna go down as the hungry superhero. 

Especially because said Mr Freeze didn’t have the decency to just ignore it, and continue to threaten Duke and the safety of Gotham as a whole so he could get his diamonds. No, instead the guy straight up stops in the middle of his villain speech and coughs.

“What?” Duke asks, because maybe he can play this off, right?

And Freeze is deeply awkward looking, which might be the only decent part of this, but still. “Do you want to—would you like to eat something?”

Which, what? “Do you have a sandwich or something? The ice cream kind, maybe?”

And then the guy proves to be able to get even more awkward looking somehow, but he doesn’t even have the decency to be wrong about it. No, he kinda gestures vaguely and goes, “Don’t you bats carry around protein bars?”

So Duke is standing there, full Signal uniform, growling stomach and all, in the middle of this bank, and he realizes that Freeze knows the contents of his utility belt better than he does. 

But it’s still a hostage situation, so what’s he even gonna do? “Look, can you just—can we just finish this up? I can’t really eat with the whole ‘dealing with a bank robbery’ thing.” Yeah. He pretends to have a fucking nervous stomach or whatever.

“I—well, I do need the diamonds.”

“How about this: we move the bank robbery to tomorrow. Just take twenty-four hours off and then everybody's happy.” The police won’t be, and Duke might possibly be remembered by far less complimentary names than ‘hungry’ for this incident, but whatever. Everyone will be more prepared, and he’ll bet Freeze won’t realize given how awkward he looks.

“Well, I… alright, should I just…” Freeze gestures at one of the fire exits, and Duke nods. There are probably cops waiting for him out there anyway, so he might just get arrested right now.

Today is the actual worst, he decides. Ever. Of all time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:  
> Jason—none that I caught, but lemme know if there’s anything I oughta add  
> Damian—discussion of violence towards children.  
> Steph—sleep-deprived and unsafe vigilantism, mild injury, like one mention of cannibalism

Jason is hallucinating. There’s no other possible explanation. He’s on some weird strain of fear gas, which just gives you something really weird and unnerving to hallucinate instead of the normal shit. Actually, he might prefer Bruce coming out of the shadows and telling him about un-adoption. This is just that weird.

“Are you paying attention?” 

“Yeah. Definitely. Noble gasses do not like to react with other stuff.”

Scarecrow huffs, and nods. “Good. I despite inattentive students.” He turns back to the paper he’s been sketching out molecular diagrams on. 

Given that the guy had heard Jason attempting to study for his Chem class with mnemonics and just _decided_ that he needed a teacher, and that Jason was only running with it because it was probably delaying evil schemery, he didn’t have much ground to stand on, since it wasn’t like this was one of his courses where the students were paying to be there. Either way, this was nuts.

Like, they’re literally standing in a death trap right now, and those diagrams are being drawn against an extra large canister of fear gas (and he’s honestly a little freaked out because Bruce hasn’t shown up yet). Scarecrow hasn’t taken off his mask, and Jason isn’t willing to tell him that the straw is blocking the view.

Hadn’t Crane been a psych professor, anyway?

“…and so a large noble gas will be near-explosive if made into a compound, which can become rather dangerous.”

 _Fuck it,_ Jason thinks, tilting his head to get to try and get around the straw and get a better look at the diagram. _I can always blame him if I fail._

Two-Face takes a slow, slow breath. He looks at the child in front of him. (Why are the Robins always so _small_ when they start out? How does he always forget that they’re so small?)

He squats down. The suit pulls awkwardly at his knees. He needs a new tailor. The kid looks halfway to spitting in his face. It’s kind of adorable.

“You remind me of a friend of mine, you know?” Bruce used to do the exact same thing with his eyebrows. It came off less adorable and more hilarious, but he can put that down to being peers, instead of… hell, if he and Glinda were still together they’d have probably had kids older than Robin. (Why is he so small?)

He straightens in his bonds somehow, despite his already ram-rod straight posture. “I am _nothing_ like any of those filthy criminals who you would call _friend._ ”

That—This kid is so—Two-Face laughs, a kind of sad chuckle that he forces to get a little fuller before he lets it trail. Bruce was a stubborn bitch, too. Probably still is. “An old friend. From back when I was just Harvey.”

Robin’s colors look too bright against the concrete and bare brick of his current hideout. It’s almost as bad as the first one. At least he’s wearing pants. He’d been planning on the whole swinging death trap deal, but…

“I am certain your taste is not much changed.” How is it that this feral child is so cute? He wants to ruffle Robin’s hair. It’d probably lose him the hand, though. 

Robin bares his teeth, and yeah, this kid is a biter. Definitely not gonna just let him loose.

Oh, no. Whoops, guess he’s gotta check whether that’s actually true now. Harvey stands up. 

He walks over to where the Table of Intimidating-Looking Tools and Weapons is, in clear view of Robin. The centerpiece, of course, is the coin.

He picks it up, rolls it in his hand. Two-Face turns again to meet the kid’s eyes. Mask lenses, whatever. His gaze. “Call it.”

“Tt. Good heads.” He sends the coin up. Back down. Catch and onto his other hand. Look.

“Good heads.” Harvey smiles. “You’re free to go.”

He picks up a knife, walks around behind the kid, and, in two quick movements, has his limbs free. This, of course, gets him roundhouse kicked in the head for his troubles, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.

Steph is honestly exhausted right now. Like, coming out on patrol was probably a bad idea kind of exhausted, but Batman’s trusted her with doing this, so she isn’t going to skip. Especially not on the first week of this patrol assignment.

That’s like not showing up to a college class in the first week; it’s basically saying ‘I’m dropping your course.’ Or the Batman equivalent. Okay, so this metaphor may not be holding up. Whatever. She wasn’t going to break the sacred Bat-Trust. Possibly a bit too sleep deprived if her brain is spouting that.

Still, she hasn’t missed a rooftop yet, so it’s all good. Spoiler is good to go, folks. Readily a danger to criminals only, and not herself at all. 

And, of course, that’s what jinxes it.

Her ankle twists, a sudden pain pulsing through it, and Steph goes tumbling towards the ground, cloak swirling through her vision and trapping her arms. 

Her life doesn’t flash before her eyes, which is actually something she’s faintly grateful for. She’s got a feeling it wouldn’t exactly be fulfilling. And so ends Spoiler, actually dead in a back alley. Weird. 

She never really considered falling as the reason that she’d dead in a back alley. Stabbing, gunshot, getting the shit beaten out of her, maybe even strangulation, but not falling.

Then the wind stops whistling through her ears with a sudden thunk, and she isn’t smashing her head open on the cold, hard ground.

Or smashing open several bags of rotting, stinking trash in a dumpster, which she is so, so glad happened to Tim and not her.

Whatever caught her doesn’t even cover her entire body, with a rough texture she can feel straight through her costume. Then it twitches, and she realizes _what_ is actually the arms of a _who._

Steph starts to wriggle, trying to get her cloak untangled enough to see what’s going on, but whoever caught her gives a startled shout and she’s falling again.

It’s only a few feet to the ground, but she lands hard on her shoulder with a grunt. And a few swears. Or several. Or a multitude.

She starts wriggling again. The cloak finally gets back to where it ought to be, and Steph sits up, staring straight at a pair of scaly knees. _Oh, no_. She tilts her gaze up slowly, past a pair of ragged pants, over a scaly, muscular stomach, and into the eyes of Killer Croc.

Croc stares back.

“Um.” What is she supposed to do here? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, um… She slowly points towards the left. “Were you gonna rob that place?”

Croc shakes his head.

She turns her finger to the right. Croc shakes his head.

Wait. Steph points behind her, towards the mouth of the alley. “Were you gonna…?”

Croc nods awkwardly. Why does the cannibal look awkward about being called out? Steph has no idea, but she’s pretty sure that this isn't gonna happen again. “Could you maybe, uh, not?”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll just…” He takes a few steps back and opens a manhole. “Just, uh…”

“Yeah.”

He disappears down into the sewer, and Steph sits there for a long, long moment, wondering if this has just been a sleep deprivation fueled hallucination. Nope, too much pain.

She presses a hand to her comm. “Hey, Oracle?”

“Spoiler?”

“I think I just ran into Killer Croc.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos are welcome


End file.
